Camille Paglia isn't the only commentator who thinks this election is, on some elemental level, best understood as a Victorian novel. Here's William Kristol at the New York Times:

In his victory speech after winning the South Carolina primary Saturday night, John McCain acknowledged the economic challenges we face, and then said: "But nothing is inevitable in our country. We are the captains of our fate."

McCain comes from a generation that, in its youth, was made to memorize poetry. And when I was able to get in touch with him Sunday in Florida, he told me that one of the poems he had memorized in school was William Ernest Henley's "Invictus" (1875). McCain actually recited snatches of the poem in our cellphone conversation--not something he does every day on the campaign trail, he pointed out.

In any case, here's Henley's Victorian warhorse:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbow'd.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

The young Henley had written this following the amputation of his foot because of tubercular infection. He lived until age 53, apparently unbow'd and unafraid, a productive poet, critic and editor. (The one-legged Henley also served as an inspiration for his close friend Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" character Long John Silver.)

One can see why "Invictus" might have appealed to the young McCain. One can see why snatches of it might have stuck in his mind while a prisoner of war, and after. But his allusion to its coda reminds us of what’s so distinctive about McCain as a contemporary political figure: He's not thoroughly modern.

In this he differs from his competitors. Mitt Romney is the very model of a modern venture capitalist. Mike Huckabee is the very model of a modern evangelical. Rudy Giuliani is the very model of a modern can-do executive. They are impressive modern men all. But John McCain is a not-so-modern type. One might call him a neo-Victorian-- rigid, self-righteous and moralizing, but (or rather and) manly, courageous and principled.

Maybe a dose of this type of neo-Victorianism is what the 21st century needs. A fair number of Republican and independent voters seem to think so, if one can infer as much from their support of McCain at the polls. But, amazingly, a neo-Victorian straightforwardness might also turn out to be strategically smart.

It's enough to make you want to dive into some Trollope, who was himself very fine indeed on the subject of elected office, character, and self-compromise. Check out Phineas Finn if there's an opening in your bedtime reading.